Most of you probably know that Halo 2's, along with every other original xbox games' servers went down on the fifteenth. It was a doom Microsoft had made warning of long in advance. So for the past couple months I've been catching up on the Halo game I never really played enough of.

Months went by and finally less than a week was left and disaster struck!! I found my copy of Halo 2 literally cracked in half sitting on top of my desk. 

It may have cracked when ejecting it from it's disc holder in box(Another game of mine broke in a similar fashion before. Same has happened to my some of my friends' games) or maybe I wasn't careful enough one of the many times I've moved my 360 from my room to the living room. What ever the case my copy of Halo 2 was broken and I was at risk of missing Halo 2's send off.

The reason I tell you this story is because I went through hell to find a new copy. You would not beleive how difficult it was to find a new copy.

To start I checked wal-mart. It wasn't there. I called Taget. It wasn't there. Gamestop doesn't sell original xbox(and even knowing this I called anyway). I called Book and music exchange, the had Halo 1 but not Halo 2. I called all the local pawn shops. None of them had it. For about half an hours I searched my closest flea market and of all the original Xbox games they did not Have Halo 2(although I did pick up a copy of Jet Set Radio Furture for two bucks  ).

I called a few friends and the one that did have a copy was out of town. There was only two days left sow ordering a copy from the internet was out of the question.

I never thought finding a copy of Halo 2 could be so hard. You'd have found it no problem at Gamestop like two years ago. Halo 2 was the best selling xbox game of all time so of course it should be the easiest xbox game to find. But not today.

All seemed lost so whats a Halo nerd to do? Why, mope about it on the bungie.net forums of course. And there I found my solution.

Users BOB570 and Sergeant Kozi backed him up telling how they also found it there. Unfortunately for me when I read this Best Buy had already closed for the night and I had to wait till the next morning(Halo 2's last full day, April 14th) to see if my Best had the game and sure enough they had it. They were even nice enough to offer holding me a copy at customer service.

It's funny to think I thought of about every place but Best Buy. But I don't generally go to Best Buy. Most things are more expensive. Halo 2 for instance was still twenty dollars there. But it was worth it to participate in Halo 2's last day with all the other Halo fans.

Halo 2: Platinum Edition. I never knew it had the "Plays on xbox360" in place of the old "Only on xbox" logo.

Once I got it home I practically played it all day. It was my least played Bungie developed Halo game and i wanted to experience what I could of it before it was gone. When all was said an done I logged in fourt nine matches. Just one short of fifity, darn 

Some pretty memorable moments were made and fun was had with friends and strangers alike.

I got to play with some pretty interesting people as well.

I even got to play a match with some guys from 343 industries and giant bomb.com www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo2.aspx?gameid=803120842&player=Vashkey

I can't say it all went with out a hitch though. When the clock striked 12 AM Halo 2 chugged on. I really wanted to see it to the end so I figured maybe it'd go down 12 AM Pacific time. Stayed up till then and the servers were still up. I looked all over the internet for answers and found none so I went to bed. I was exhausted the next day. I found out that aparently Microsoft had no scheduled time for when it was going down just that they'd be taking the server down some time that day.

I slept most of the 15th and when I woke up the servers were down. so I didn't get to quite be there for the final hours.

Oh well, I still had a great time playing me some Halo 2. 

And so the Halo 2 adventure ends.

The next? Oh, it begins very soon.

Most of you probably know that Halo 2's, along with every other original xbox games' servers went down on the fifteenth. It was a doom Microsoft had made warning of long in advance. So for the past couple months I've been catching up on the Halo game I never really played enough of.

Months went by and finally less than a week was left and disaster struck!! I found my copy of Halo 2 literally cracked in half sitting on top of my desk. 

It may have cracked when ejecting it from it's disc holder in box(Another game of mine broke in a similar fashion before. Same has happened to my some of my friends' games) or maybe I wasn't careful enough one of the many times I've moved my 360 from my room to the living room. What ever the case my copy of Halo 2 was broken and I was at risk of missing Halo 2's send off.

The reason I tell you this story is because I went through hell to find a new copy. You would not beleive how difficult it was to find a new copy.

To start I checked wal-mart. It wasn't there. I called Taget. It wasn't there. Gamestop doesn't sell original xbox(and even knowing this I called anyway). I called Book and music exchange, the had Halo 1 but not Halo 2. I called all the local pawn shops. None of them had it. For about half an hours I searched my closest flea market and of all the original Xbox games they did not Have Halo 2(although I did pick up a copy of Jet Set Radio Furture for two bucks  ).

I called a few friends and the one that did have a copy was out of town. There was only two days left sow ordering a copy from the internet was out of the question.

I never thought finding a copy of Halo 2 could be so hard. You'd have found it no problem at Gamestop like two years ago. Halo 2 was the best selling xbox game of all time so of course it should be the easiest xbox game to find. But not today.

All seemed lost so whats a Halo nerd to do? Why, mope about it on the bungie.net forums of course. And there I found my solution.

Users BOB570 and Sergeant Kozi backed him up telling how they also found it there. Unfortunately for me when I read this Best Buy had already closed for the night and I had to wait till the next morning(Halo 2's last full day, April 14th) to see if my Best had the game and sure enough they had it. They were even nice enough to offer holding me a copy at customer service.

It's funny to think I thought of about every place but Best Buy. But I don't generally go to Best Buy. Most things are more expensive. Halo 2 for instance was still twenty dollars there. But it was worth it to participate in Halo 2's last day with all the other Halo fans.

Halo 2: Platinum Edition. I never knew it had the "Plays on xbox360" in place of the old "Only on xbox" logo.

Once I got it home I practically played it all day. It was my least played Bungie developed Halo game and i wanted to experience what I could of it before it was gone. When all was said an done I logged in fourt nine matches. Just one short of fifity, darn 

Some pretty memorable moments were made and fun was had with friends and strangers alike.

I got to play with some pretty interesting people as well.

I even got to play a match with some guys from 343 industries and giant bomb.com www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo2.aspx?gameid=803120842&player=Vashkey

I can't say it all went with out a hitch though. When the clock striked 12 AM Halo 2 chugged on. I really wanted to see it to the end so I figured maybe it'd go down 12 AM Pacific time. Stayed up till then and the servers were still up. I looked all over the internet for answers and found none so I went to bed. I was exhausted the next day. I found out that aparently Microsoft had no scheduled time for when it was going down just that they'd be taking the server down some time that day.

I slept most of the 15th and when I woke up the servers were down. so I didn't get to quite be there for the final hours.

Oh well, I still had a great time playing me some Halo 2. 

And so the Halo 2 adventure ends.

The next? Oh, it begins very soon.

Quality blog, you've set a nice example. Great story. Compelling.. and rich.
 
Looking forward to the next step in Halo as well. That's a beauty of a screenshot :D

That was entertaining. Makes me wish I went out to get Halo 2 before the end as well, but if I did that I'd have to convince my friends as well, which would be a tall task.

I guess you can't do internet shopping, otherwise I would have suggested Amazon.com. I went to my local Gamestop looking for an extra copy to give to my coworker so he can join me during the last few weeks, but I had no luck. I wasn't going to put more effort than that into finding it for him. Still, I had a wonderful time during my last day with the game. I'll probably also write a blog about it soon.